The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen
Synopsis
Documentary films rarely tell the stories of the complexity of black women’s lives, let alone black feminists, which renders black lesbians practically invisible.
For over six decades, Angela Bowen has pursued her three passions: classical dance, activism and teaching, influencing thousands. How has Bowen keep her passions alive, even in the face of poverty and the ugliness of racism, sexism, ageism and homophobia? What kind of strategies has she devised? How have her choices affected her life and the lives of those closest to her?
Angela Bowen, an extraordinary ordinary woman is intended to inspire many people from diverse backgrounds to pursue their passions, but not for themselves alone, a concept that Bowen learned early in her life, passing it along to all who would listen. And it is this philosophy, which informs Bowen's decision to candidly share her stories and experiences in Passionate Pursuits.
The stories in Passionate Pursuits are rich in detail about what it meant to be black a black ballerina when the unwritten "no blacks on Broadway" rule was in effect. In the video work in progress, Kenneth Scott, Angela's former dance partnerl, says that when he was seventeen and came looking for work on Broadway it was almost like "someone had put up a wall." Bowen and Scott joined the historic Jazz Train and went to Europe as did so many black artists before them, including Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham.
Passionate Pursuits pays attention to Bowen's feelings and thinking during critical periods of transition as well as to her own role and influences in the cultural and social movements in which she participated: Black Arts, Women's Liberation, and Lesbian and Gay Liberation movements from the late seventies to the early 1990s.
The story of how the Bowen-Peters school was launched and the tragedy that almost derailed the project after only three years of operation is compelling and shows its overwhelming impact on an entire community. Bowen opened her school at the cusp of what is now referred to as the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, but she built it upon the Black Arts of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s as well. Of course there are many stories from her numerous dance students, (only some will be selected). Among them is Traer Price, an internationally recognized water choreographer (which includes the Bellagio Resort Hotel, Las Vegas) who describes Bowen's capacity to see into each child, allowing them to be whoever they were (extremely shy, Traer Price rarely spoke) and teaching each one as if she or he was as likely to succeed as the most talented one. Price says that she was influenced profoundly by Bowen's choreography and the classical music she learned to love at dance school. "I watched her choreograph, how she did it, and what I saw influences me to this day." After my interview with Price, I videotaped Price dancing against a backdrop of one of her water choreographies. When Bowen decided to close the school after 19 years, she says it "was the hardest decision of my life," but I had the right to reach the next part of my life.
Passionate Pursuits is also story about what it means to bring all of who you are into a university and university classroom fraught with all too familiar challenges and which forced her to draw on all the lessons of her past to make a decision about her future. The author and educator Beverly Guy-Sheftal (currently president of the National Women's Studies Association and Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies and English and Founding Director of the Women's Research and Resource Center at Spelman College, discusses about Bowen and the particular challenges facing black women professors, adding that it is a story which unfortunately needs to be told over and over again.
While there is a trend to examine the intersection of race, class, gender, age and sexuality, we rarely see or hear how these forces manifest in one woman’s life to shape her experience and purpose as she pursues her passions: classical dance, activism and teaching.
Budget:
$ 60,000.00
Project's Financial Needs
Funds of any amount are critically needed to work with an editor. I am disabled. Also, I have one old computer and I desperately need a new one. I need funds to transfer historic super-eight videotapes containing Bowen's choreography and student/company dance performances to DV. Although no footage of Bowen's dancing exists, there are tapes of her students dancing and her students students.
Other financial Support
Hoff Foundation, Post Production, one of three awardees summer 2008.
Dance Film Association, summer 2009
Current stage of production
Post-Production
Estimated Completion Date
08/20/2010
Background
Angela Bowen's Passionate Pursuits is not a fairy tale, by any means, although it certainly has magical moments. Three women, her mother, her dance teacher and her English teacher, who nurtured Bowen's mind, body, and spirit powerfully influenced Bowen, who grew up in material poverty. "Elma Lewis let me know I could teach, Miss Palm, let me know I could write." Her mother let her know that she had the right to live her own life but not for herself alone. "My mother would say, what is the sense of learning something and knowing something if you can't teach it to someone else?" Sarah Allen Bowen, who was widowed when Angela was only two years old, embedded in her seven children an appreciation of self-worth, the value of self-scrutiny, the necessity for critical observation of the people and the world around her, all of which Bowen utilizes and imparts to this day. She was told also that she had the right to own her own life, a philosophy which, ironically, brought her into painful conflict with all three women.
I have been gathering material since 2000 when Bowen approved of my video project. It took Bowen several years because she didn't necessarily trust the motivation for the video. She probed my mind to make me articulate my purpose for the video. But once she decided, in her typical fashion she has never wavered despite the challenges facing this producer.
Treatment
Bowen's colorful stories are juxtaposed with candid interviews from a diverse group of artists, activists, university colleagues, former dance students, recent university students, and family members (her son, her daughter, her foster daughter, her ex-husband, and her life partner) whose lives have intersected with Bowen's in very different ways.
Historic photos and footage of Bowen's dancers and her choreography, and footage of her students students and historic television excerpts of Bowen as an outspoken national activist are highlighted and an eclectic choice of music accompanies each stage of Bowen's life.
The video reflects the three stages of Bowen's life and her reflection and analysis of her strategies for survivial and what she has learned that she tries to pass along to all who are interested in listening.
Target Audience
The intended audience is wide and inclusive, nationally and internationally, audiences interested in Dance: performing, choreographing, teaching, running a dance and cultural center; the history of Black Arts and Culture; Social Justice Movements, and mentoring future generations.
The story of The Bowen-Peters School, its struggles and its influence is extremely relevant today in the face of dwindling dance, art and music programs in the schools. A special mission of the filmmaker is to send a message of both support and warning to minority communities who have created and tried to sustain art and cultural programs in their neighborhoods.
The video will be appropriate for film festivals appealing to diverse audiences. Audience outreach will include: youth art and media centers, black non-profit arts organizations, public libraries, and senior centers. One goal is to reach a national audience via public television and/or appropriate cable channels.
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